Rachel Aviv
Autor/a de Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us
Obres de Rachel Aviv
Obres associades
Etiquetat
Coneixement comú
- Gènere
- female
- Nacionalitat
- USA
- Llocs de residència
- Brooklyn, New York, USA
- Educació
- Brrown University
Membres
Ressenyes
Llistes
Premis
Potser també t'agrada
Autors associats
Estadístiques
- Obres
- 1
- També de
- 3
- Membres
- 290
- Popularitat
- #80,656
- Valoració
- 3.9
- Ressenyes
- 6
- ISBN
- 12
- Llengües
- 2
It helps that the author seems to have chosen her case studies well. Freud occasionally gets criticized for basing many of his theories on his experiences with wealthy, fin-de-siecle Viennese patients, but Aviv takes things in a very different direction here. She includes a woman with a privileged upbringing who grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, but also a working class black woman whose mental issues and disastrous choices lead to her incarceration and an Indian woman who uses her Hindu faith to better deal with her mental health issues. The author also describes her own experiences in the mental health system -- she was once the youngest anorexic on record -- and traces the experiences of another patient she met while institutionalized. While I found "Strangers to Ourselves" generally interesting, the author's decision to tell these stories struck me as genuinely brave. It's hard not to feel that something's wrong when, as she puts it, a psychological diagnosis can lead to a "career" in mental illness.
The author also provides a historically interesting recounting of how traditional, long-term psychotherapy fell out of favor, describing a court case that marked the beginning of the end of the school of thought that believed that you'd need a comfortable couch and a decade in therapy to resolve your inner conflicts. This case is justly famous in mental health circles, but I'd never heard of it. While many of these stories are genuinely inspiring -- since they show how people with difficult psychological issues adopted unconventional methods in order to live with their genuinely difficult psychological issues -- this chapter serves as a warning. Even the best care won't solve your problems for you. Recommended to professionals and hobbyists alike.… (més)